Veneto Villas Itineraries

Veneto Villas

In 1497 Christopher Columbus reached the American continent. Soon after, hundreds of European navigators and ships open new routs towards new worlds, offering the enterprising merchants new trades and markets. The Mediterranean see on whose control Venice had based his wealth and power, was doomed to inexorably loose importance. The Ottoman Empire had already started to make trades on the Mediterranean see unsafe, and also the celebrated battle of Lepanto in 1571, couldn't stop the slow decline of Venice. Suddenly, the noble and wealthy Venetian families, started to reconsider those territories that Venice had conquered at the beginning of the 15th century. Fertile lands, rich in fresh water and full of industrious craftsmen, which could become a new source of wealth for a social class that had already started its ostentatious decline.
Villas became centers of the activities of the fields that where around them, and also a way to show economic and social power. Venetian families, for centuries had lived in the cramped alleys and canals of Venice, and now had plenty of space where they could build huge palaces, with huge halls decorated with frescoes, at last adequate to their status. Villas became a place where nobles could spend relaxing moments, especially in summer, far from the chaotic life of the capital of the Venetian Republic. Even nowadays in standard Italian, the word "Villeggiare", literarily "doing villa", means spending holdays relaxing somewhere outside big cities.
One of the main creators of the so called Veneto Villa was Andrea Palladio who, drawing his inspirations from the ancient architecture, designed new "temples" for the new Venetian nobility "gods". Together with Palladio, Scamozzi, Muttoni and many other architects together with the painters that decorated the inside of villas such as Paolo Veronese, contributed to create this amazing heritage scattered on the whole Veneto territory, from Verona to Venice.
Visiting the Veneto Villas is a unique experience that will let you feel those refined sensations that felt those who lived there.

Ask a tourist guide to design for you an sightseeing itinerary that will allow you to see the most of the Veneto Villas and Palladio works with your available time: